i will be your sword and shield
and you will be mine
*
Calliope wonders.
When he touches her, lips to mane and flesh to flesh, she wonders. She is a unicorn with a lion soul. She is the harsh hand of justice. She is a reaper, a queen, a godless mortal who has traveled through a sea of universes on the back of storm-clouds. Always has she been certain of all the things she is.
But here, with him pressed against her just so and her tail rising up to tangle about his, she wonders. Perhaps she is a unicorn, a forgotten queen of a dead world. Perhaps though, she might still be so much more. She will always be justice but might she not also 'more'?
Oh how she wonders as he talks. She doesn't answer his question, doesn't do anything more than lean against him a little harder. It's a strange feeling for her, to give against the sharp, broad angles of him instead of push and push until the entire world gives before her determination. Calliope says nothing as he continues to explore the arch of her neck, nothing still when he asks for a story.
She thinks of Eik and how he was brave enough to ask a unicorn for a story. Like then a hundred different stories lash like electricity against her lips and that old lion in her soul roars for its death. But one rises against the rest like a tidal wave.
Only a single story seems important beneath the bones with their skin tighter than the place where the horizon meets the sea.
“I found Shrike after she died. She was in another world. I didn't tell you when you found me last. I was still too raw.” Calliope says the words like a confession. His skin is the altar upon which she must atone and ask for forgiveness. Her eyes, still closed, are the veil behind which all sinners hides.
She sighs and it feels like an absolution just to know that words will follow the sound. “My soul was the same but I was no longer a unicorn. I was no lion either. There I was a fragile thing that walked on two legs instead of four. It was a horse that carried me there, with skin as dark as mine and no horn upon its brow. Sometimes it felt like a dream, a nightmare. Perhaps I would have believed it to be no more than a horror found only in sleep if it was not for the remembering.”
Calliope opens her eyes then, meets his gaze with the fire sparking in the silver around her pupils. It's a bond that gaze of hers, a whisper that he might never know the horror of being trapped in so strange a body. Although she imagines he might still wield his scythe as she had her horn.
There are certain parts of them no universe or god can take. A soul is one and a weapon that has tasted blood the other.
“She was there in a body as strange as mine. I knew her instantly. How could I forget my sister's soul? Especially when I watched it drift away from her body after I killed her with a mercy blow.” She blinks and the gesture makes the moisture gathering in the corner of her eyes look like no more than a coagulation of humidity against the boiling heat of her. “I found her upon a broken ship with a vicious harpy circling like a vulture. And when she looked at me it was only caution that met my smile. She placed her hand at her throat as if her body knew to fear mine, as if I would kill her.” Lamentation feels strange on her lips. Calliope is not made for sorrow without rage and blood. She is not made to feel things other horses might.
Again she wonders. Raymond makes her wonder.
“Tell me that your soul will always remember mine.” Her lips feel like a sword, as if she will take her retribution for the pain she bears from the sweetness of his blood and sweat. “Tell me that you could never hope to forget me.” And now her body feels like the altar, empty and hollow and bare of any relic that might hold meaning.
No longer is Calliope just a unicorn.
She is Raymond's as much as she is vengeance.
@Raymond
